I have a middling opinion of the game so far. I liked the first few hours, but now I have the (very minor spoiler) boat (end minor spoiler), and I’m much less excited. For one, while I haven’t beaten the game, I’ve heard tell from others that the game never ends the damn handholding. The brokenhearted fetch quests are really exercises in busywork. They’d be busywork if they left it up to the player, with Drippy holding your hand, they’re just completely pointless
Guy: GODDAMNIT BITCH I’MA CUT YOUR THROAT FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN I’M A HUGE SOCIOPATHIC DICK
Oliver: Man, that guy’s mean, I wonder what’s wrong.
Drippy: Looks like a classic case of brokenheartedness, mun.
Oliver: Are you sure?
Guy: I’M GONNA RIP OFF YOUR HEAD AND SHIT DOWN YOUR THROAT
Drippy: Just look at him, mun!
Oliver: But what piece of his heart could be missing?
Guy: DIE DIE DIE! BLEED BLEED BLEED! SUFFER!
Drippy: He looks to be lacking kindness.
Oliver: Kindness? Gee willikers, Drippy, are you sure?
GUY: I HAVE NO LOVE FOR MAN NOR BEAST AND WISH NOTHING MORE THAN FOR YOU ALL TO SUFFER AND DIE
Drippy: Yes, I’m sure, mun! Are ye daft or something?
Oliver: Okay, let’s go [del]look for a dot on the minimap and read some flavor text[/del] find some kindness, Drippy!
Similar things happen with “find their Soulmate” stuff. I wish I could figure out what I have to do myself, but they really, laboriously spell it out for you. I feel like they go too far even for a JRPG.
Credit where it’s due though, there have been a couple of puzzles that require reading the Wizard’s Companion, and those are great. While they’re still a bit mechanical and just require basic reading comprehension, it’s a very nice mechanic, though unfortunately I’ve heard it’s used at best a small handful of times throughout the entire length of the game. I’ve heard that some of the hand-holdy puzzle design is a side effect of the DS version, where to cast a spell you have to look up the strokes in the book and draw them, so the puzzles all required a degree of research – whereas with this game they kept all the same puzzles, but put all the spells in a menu so it’s just a silly, “gee I wonder which blatantly obvious menu option I should pick?” I have to question why they didn’t go the Okami route and have you draw the strokes like the Celestial Brush.
Next, the AI. I was reading the Gamefaqs boards, and let me say I don’t have near as much trouble with the AI as many people there do, I almost never have had the AI die during a boss fight, but that may be my extensive attention to healing people. The rest of their criticisms, though, are spot on. The AI is completely rock stupid. The AI has absolutely no qualms about blowing its entire magic pool on a random encounter, even with the tactics menu. Even if you put it on “don’t use abilities” it will decide that clearly the best option is to send out a monster with no physical attack, or even unsummon their familiar and whack at the thing with their puny 1-damage weapon. Bonus points for never defending and having a tendency to, er… “stand in the fire.”
Right now, monsters are eating me alive, I have a decent party with a good attribute and sign spread, with all the best equipment available, plus having done all the sidequests and I find myself wanting to avoid battles. They’re SO tedious at this point in the game, and I find my party being low on health and mana (mostly the AI characters) after almost every one. Not to mention every time you catch a monster or evolve (“metamorphose”) it, it starts at level one, so to power up your party you’re forced to potentially put your best monsters completely out of commision for a while until you grind them back up. I don’t really DIE much (though I have a couple times), but it’s very tedious. It’s not that it’s difficult, difficulty implies I’m doing something wrong and more skill would fix it, I don’t feel like I really have anything I as a player could do to fix it (short of grinding). Maybe I just have a bad party composition, or my tactics are really crappy and I just really suck at monster raising games, but if that’s the case I certainly can’t tell whether it’s that or just an outrageous difficulty spike from nowhere.
Minor complaints:
Bizarre voice acting jumps. I’m used to JRPGs like Tales where only every once in a while is a scene voice acted, but Ni No Kuni has this odd habit of only voice acting three lines in an important scene and then just abruptly dropping it.
Accent schizophrenia. You know that fantasy trope where you’ll have a small isolated village with a guy named Fred, and his friend, Orkra’gar’izilianth? This is similar, except with accents. Where people who purportedly have the same home town have completely different accents (and different from their parents at the same time, on occasion). I’m really nitpicking here, it just kind of bugged me a little.
Running away from enemies on the map is all but pointless. Once an enemy spots you, good luck avoiding the encounter, most of the time running away is just an invitation to start combat with a disadvantage, rather than a time-saver.
I don’t want to give the impression I hate the game. I really love the story, and the combat can be fun – though I like bosses more than random encounters. I just find myself struggling to work up the interest to play it after the third town, despite being very interested in the story. About the 17 hour mark for me, though that’s partially because I spent about an hour of idle time on the pause screen, and a few hours thoroughly reading the Wizard’s Companion (including translating pages 4-5). I don’t think I’d say “avoid it”, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend it either, except for the story and animation.
This is kinda what they DO. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re a… I don’t have a good equivalent for them over here, truthfully. They’re a major animation studio, but they ONLY (prior to this, I suppose) do movies. Big, colorful, high budget, traditional animation, great music, generally heartwarming at the least and genuinely moving at their finest. It’s like…imagine if Disney had gone for “we want to make films that genuinely move people” instead of “we want to make films that will sell lots of merchandise”. Not that Ghibli doesn’t sell lots of merchandise, it’s just that that’s not why they make their movies.
), Arc Rise Fantasia, Fire Emblem, and some of the Tales series and Action JRPGs like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Pandora’s Tower (US release announced recently), and Monster Hunter Tri.